Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

What’s Wrong with the World
is dedicated to the defense of
what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of
the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the
Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Tortured Positivism

Strong positivism insists, from one point of view, that unless we have a theory of everything X we don't know anything relevant about X. (Another point of view is that it insists that anything not expressed in our theory of everything X is irrelevant, which amounts to the same thing). I've talked before about how the positivist-postmodern dynamic works out in practice: positivists believe (contra all evidence and reason) that we can formally express everything true (or relevant) about X. Postmoderns conclude that because positivism is irrational we don't really know anything about X. Both positivism and postmodernism, then, depend on a particular approach to knowledge: an approach which insists that completeness is required in order to have relevant knowledge at all; that incomplete knowledge is invalid. In a sense, then, they both confuse the incomplete with the indefinite.

Modernity exists in a stew of positivism and postmodernism. Because of this, arguments often proceed as though definite conclusions cannot be reached until a comprehensive definition or "Theory of Everything X" is produced.

But we don't need to have a Theory of Everything in order to know some things. For example, we don't need to have a Theory of Everything Abortion to know that when a woman has the living child suctioned out of her womb because she doesn't want to get fat, she has procured an abortion. And we don't need to have a Theory of Everything Torture in order to know that when we waterboard a prisoner to get him to talk, we have committed an act of torture. Sure, stating what was done in that manner doesn't fit a careful and formal deontological casuistry of the morality of acts, and it doesn't provide us with a Theory of Everything with respect to the moral subject matter in question. But that doesn't mean we are even slightly uncertain as to whether what was actually done in the particular case was abortion or torture.

Comments (63)

All perfectly reasonable, but I just can't remember seeing anyone argue that because we can't know everything about what constitutes torture, that waterboarding is therefore not torture. Nor that because we don't know everything there is to know about waterboarding, that we therefore don't know enough about it to call it torture. There is some disagreement on what constitutes torture, and whether waterboarding qualifies, but that's not the same thing at all. This argument is so important precisely because of a shared conviction that torture is evil.

I think it's the "bright line" thing. In fact, there is a sort of interesting philosophical question here: Is it the fact that X cannot be intrinsically evil if X can be seen as falling on a continuum with Y, which is clearly not intrinsically evil? The whole torture issue has taught me to say, "No." And really, I should never have been in any doubt, because this is true in so many other areas. Take punishing your child. It's okay to send your child to his room for one hour as punishment, but not for one month!

Sometimes I think conservatives have seemed to imply the contrary w.r.t. the pro-life issue. For example, discussions of the beginning of human life have sometimes, I think accidentally, given the following impression: "All important ethical questions require a bright line to answer them. The development of the child falls along a continuum. But abortion is an important ethical question. _For this reason_, the development of the child cannot be the determining factor in whether abortion is immoral."

The punch line, to make it more explicit, if that is possible, is that the endless pursuit of a "definition" of torture which comprehensively answers all possible hypotheticals that people are constantly throwing at the wall is not just a complete waste of time, but is also material cooperation with grave evil. If your wife sleeps with the neighbor and is thinking about sleeping with another one the last thing it makes any sense to do is embark on an endless six-year Internet debate over the definition of adultery; and if the neighbor's friends are constantly and publicly pursuing that debate they are actually doing moral wrong, because of the context.

That is definitely part of it. I wonder if there is a sense in which I 'get out more' than my fellow combox crawlers, because it seems to me that just about everyone invokes the "bright line" or sorites "problem" with things that line up along their obvious political affiliations. It is done as much and as vehemently with abortion "what about ectopic pregnancies and these forty-six other hypotheticals!?", contraception, etc as with torture. But everyone seems to think their own "bright line" puzzles are unique, and represent the first discovery ever that formal definitions cannot comprehensively encompass all possible hypothetical reality.

In analytic philosophy there is even a rather famous British philosopher, Timothy Williamson, who employs the sorites problem in some odd and unexpected areas in epistemology--for example, to argue (IIRC) that there are not incorrigible foundational beliefs.

Well, there are problems with that approach to the issue, particularly that the people who write the field interrogation manuals have to actually ask and answer these questions. Clear, concise, and easily-understood guidelines have to be drawn up so that a person always knows which side of the line he's on. He can't be told to just go with his gut. The only reason these questions are being asked is precisely because nobody wants to be accused, with any justice, of advocating torture.

The comparison with abortion is inapt, because the abortionist's situation differs so radically from the interrogator's, inasmuch as there is something intrinsically evil about abortion--there's no arguing over whether the line between a dead baby and a live one is "bright"--whereas there's nothing intrinsically evil about conducting an interrogation, even a tough one. The interrogator's role is not obviously an evil one, and he has a positive moral duty to do his job well. That necessitates that he ask such questions as whether waking up a prisoner at 3 AM to question him constitutes torture.

Another problem is that people have been so irresponsible in the use of the term, and it's no use pretending that everyone hammering Bush on this issue is doing so in good faith. When one side has described perfectly innocuous and necessary measures as "torture," purely for rhetorical and political effect, it's disingenuous to accuse the other of cynical hair-splitting when they deny the charge.

Basically, I'm with you, and I think that any ambiguities should be decided in favor of the prisoner. Obviously, there are some people who are mincing words for the wrong reasons, and there are people who have struck an agnostic pose simply for the sake of expediency. But there are some real and consequential differences, too, between an abortionist who asks for concrete guidance because he'd like to muddy the waters, and a soldier who does so because he literally has to.

The role of the abortionist is to kill a person. They aren't acting within a moral medical framework at all, and there's no sense in which they can be said to have merely "crossed a line somewhere." If, Lydia, your pro-life friends are confused on this issue, as you've said, perhaps because this isn't a question that's particularly relevant to whether abortion is murder.

Well, there are problems with that approach to the issue, particularly that the people who write the field interrogation manuals have to actually ask and answer these questions.

That waterboarding a prisoner for information is torture was never controversial - for, like, thousands of years - until it became public that the CIA was doing it to "illegal combatants".

Another problem is that people have been so irresponsible in the use of the term, and it's no use pretending that everyone hammering Bush on this issue is doing so in good faith. When one side has described perfectly innocuous and necessary measures as "torture," purely for rhetorical and political effect, it's disingenuous to accuse the other of cynical hair-splitting when they deny the charge.

I agree, but that kind of specious nonsense ought to be easy to dismiss - and would be easy to dismiss if we hadn't actually tortured prisoners. Someone who has actually committed rape (for example) is necessarily in a different position than someone who has always and impeccably treated the fair sex with chivalry and honor. If we are in a position now where we have to be careful to the extent of not doing any number of things which might in fact be morally licit, it is only and precisely because of the torture-enablers among us.

The role of the abortionist is to kill a person. They aren't acting within a moral medical framework at all, and there's no sense in which they can be said to have merely "crossed a line somewhere."

Not true at all in precisely the difficult cases, e.g. ectopic pregnancy. And when it comes to fantasy hypotheticals versus reality, ticking-time-bomb torture cases are the former and ectopic pregnancies are the latter.

I never said that waterboarding isn't torture, by the way, and I don't deny it. And clearly, you're right on the practical implications, not to say the politics, of the evils that have already been done. But you have taken a position which would make it impossible for people to engage the issue in a rational way, because even to ask relevant questions about the limits of our conduct--as we are bound to do--marks you out as a crypto-torture-advocate.

It strikes me as extremely unfair, precisely because I'm one of those people who has tried to engage the issue in good faith and fidelity to the moral law. I register the same gag at the thought of torturing a helpless prisoner as any healthy soul, but as I actually work in the business of national defense, I also recognize that not everybody has the luxury of simply gagging and calling it a day.

Well, I actually meant to bring up the "bright line" issue and make the abortion comparison not because of ectopic pregnancy but because some pro-aborts want to say that the child's level of development (though they don't call the child "the child") is terribly important. They are completely wrong, and the truth in the abortion case is that there _is_ a biological "bright line"--namely, conception--after which it just is biologically the case that we have a new member of the biological species. Any attempt to deny that or ignore it is pro-abortion sophistry, of a sort that is wearisomely familiar.

But I know I used to have a tendency to point to the biological bright line of conception in debate by adopting an overarching principle to the effect that there *must always* be an epistemically accessible bright line wherever there is any intrinsically evil act in the vicinity. Now, that much stronger claim is what I now think is incorrect. That is, even when there is a sorites issue, one can still commit an intrinsically evil act--as in any case where one is exercising punishment, putting pressure on someone, etc.

"Not true at all in precisely the difficult cases, e.g. ectopic pregnancy. And when it comes to fantasy hypotheticals versus reality, ticking-time-bomb torture cases are the former and ectopic pregnancies are the latter."

Well, your analogy makes perfect sense but you're also shifting ground a bit. In the "ticking time bomb" scenario, it's recognized that torture is still torture, but the argument is that in that instance, torture is justified (it's not). That's not the same thing as asking, "is it torture?"

I think Sage raises an interesting point, so (since I've come out in favor of plain speaking), I'll put what I think Sage is getting at in the form of a question: Zippy, is it your position that anyone who tries to discover and/or justify interrogation techniques that are not torture but that do make the prisoner uncomfortable and that are effective is an "apologist for torture-lite" and/or is ipso facto doing something wrong?

...because even to ask relevant questions about the limits of our conduct--as we are bound to do--marks you out as a crypto-torture-advocate.

I think it is perfectly acceptable to ask relevant questions while making it clear that what we have already and actually done is unequivocally, without any question or doubt, completely unjustifiable and illicit torture. Saying "we tortured prisoners and were totally in the wrong when we waterboarded them; but there are still issues that need to be discussed about licit interrogation" is quite different from repeating the six year mantra "gee, what really exactly is the definition torture" while at best remaining ambivalent and noncomittal about what we've actually been doing to actual prisoners.

I've discussed the casuistry of torture, interrogation, punishment, etc myself quite a lot in the last six years, so if I were against doing so tout court that would be self-refuting. But I've always (to much wailing and gnashing of teeth) done so in a context of unequivocally condemning our waterboarding of prisoners, the unapologetic strappado-killing of Manadel-al Jamadi, etc. Condemning real, actual, obvious acts of torture - especially the ones done by us - is a prerequisite for entry into the discussion; just as condemning real, actual, obvious abortions is prerequisite to discussing ectopic pregnancy. That is not the case as some kind of rhetorical moral superiority ploy or whatever: it is objectively necessary to counter the otherwise-existent material cooperation with evil which accompanies publicly discussing the matter in ambivalence to present day real and concrete acts.

Well, your analogy makes perfect sense but you're also shifting ground a bit. In the "ticking time bomb" scenario, it's recognized that torture is still torture, but the argument is that in that instance, torture is justified (it's not). That's not the same thing as asking, "is it torture?"

Well, again, I must get out more than others. There was a huge dustup at Jimmy Akin's blog, with many spinoff bloggings and controversies, when he (tentatively) proposed that waterboarding a prisoner might ordinarily be torture but that in a TTB scenario it might not be torture.

Hopefully my reply to Sage shows that the problem I'm pointing out occurs when public discussion of casuistry is not plain-spoken enough for the particular context. The problem arises precisely when ambivalent casuistry creates a moral fog over present-day real, concrete wicked acts; a fog which can only be countered by the accompaniment of unequivocal condemnation of those real, concrete wicked acts.

All fair enough, Zippy (and Lydia), though I doubt very much that Jimmy Akin's bizarre argument is really all that common. More common, unfortunately, has been the claim that torture under those circumstances is still torture, but the circumstances make it permissible all the same.

It would be really nice if some people, particularly those who are philosophically astute would stop equating postmodernism with deconstructionism. We are in a postmodern time, or we are entering one at the very least and I for one am extremely happy about that. Modernity was a disaster. Don't concede the coming battle before its even begun. Yes, deconstructionism was first but it's not alone anymore.
There is another postmodern alternative, radical orthodoxy, which is nothing like deconstructionism.

I think that what everyone calls postmodernity/desconstructionism is really just a form of modernity that takes it own claims more seriously than the previous generation of liberal moderns. But I agree that the terminology is unfortunate -- and that Pickstock, Milbank and the like have said some pretty interesting things that I though were quite eye-opening, though I haven't checked in on what the RO's are up to in a few years.

I doubt very much that Jimmy Akin's bizarre argument is really all that common.

It may not be in general -- but it certainly is on the Catholic blogs I read regularly. The original post is two and a half years old, and the idea still gets parroted and argued over regularly; FWIW. (The torture debate in the circle of Catholic blogs I read is about six years old).

My own writing is necessarily in part a reflection of the things I read, so perhaps the issue is not that I get out more than others but rather that I generally hang so much with the same crowd.

Sorry, Kevin V., I, unlike Zippy, chamber a round when I hear "postmodern." And I don't think its exponents have said anything interesting. But I won't hijack the thread to that discussion.

The thing is, Zippy, I have to come out and say this: We had a long discussion of this topic back on Enchiridion Militis years ago. And as I understood you, your objection was in general to doing unpleasant things to people, even if they were not torture, *as a means of obtaining information* rather than as a definite, limited, and pre-set deserved punishment for their past acts. Your postiion, as I remember it and understood it, was that anything of the form, "I'm going to do this, because I want you to reveal information," even if it wasn't even close to being torture, was wrong, because it involved treating the person as a means rather than as an end. In other words, "what is torture" wasn't really the crucial question, or even a crucial question, anyway.

Now, when I recognize something to be torture (and as far as I know, I do so recognize the things you are talking about here), I'm completely on board with you in condemning it unequivocally. And I also agree that there are non-torture acts that are evil--for example, setting up a woman to be a man's spy-mistress in the hopes that he will reveal secrets to her. But I'm hesitant about your larger perspective on interrogation and people-as-means, in part because it seems to me to be so easy to trivialize, as though we really do have to treat people very, very nicely and not even harass them in any way, shape, or form, except insofar as they have definitely been sentenced to being treated at all not-nicely. So I've tended to interpret your subsequent statements in light of that earlier discussion. So, for example, when you have heaped scorn upon people for "seeing how close we can get without committing torture" or for "defending torture-lite," or words to that effect, I've tended to take it that that arises out of your general idea that, to put it straightforwardly, any variety whatsoever of unpleasant interrogation is just plain wrong, because it treats the person as a means. Hence, your contempt for people engaging in these kinds of debates arose, I took it, from your idea that they were trying to justify thus treating these prisoners as dehumanized means to some other end.

But that leads right to Sage's concern that this seems to put someone like him more or less in the same boat as the pro-torture crowd.

...despite having earned a Ph.D. from one of the top philosophy programs in the world, not all that many years ago... Who are these "strong positivists?" And what do they actually believe? And what is their status, among trained philosophers, these days?

Perhaps there is a hint here as to the disconnect in the line of questioning. When I talk about, say, liberalism, I'm not talking about contemporary academic philosophy, its characters, or its fashions. When I talk about how (groups of) modern people tend to think, I don't have in mind a roster of the attendees of Brian Leiter's cocktail parties, if he has any. In fact I didn't even know Brian Leiter's name, or that he existed, until his juvenile attacks on Ed Feser recently. That isn't my world, any more than contemporary academic economics is my world when I talk about finance. When I talk about how real people think about money, I'm talking about people who actually "do" money, on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms and venture capital pitches, etc.

So I suppose it is not surprising that what I write tends to resonate with folks other than contemporary academic philosophers or contemporary academic economists, or whatever. Everyone has a philosophy or bundle of philosophies; only a very small number of people are academic philosophers. I don't know (and don't pretend to know) the world of the latter, well, at all. Like I said, the Brian Leiter "inside baseball" was completely new to me - including even the guy's existence - just as an example. That just isn't my world. I read voraciously and doubtless steal ideas without attribution all the time, simply because I don't remember where they came from but they made sense to me. That is one of the hazards of being an uneducated slacker.

Whether what I say accurately describes how (groups of) people in the real world think and act is best left to the judgment of my readers. The context of this post is in part the recent and lengthy threads here on optimistic naturalism, etc. So to answer one of your questions in that context, Stephen Hawking is someone I would call a strong positivist, though his recent recantations about the possibility of a physical Theory of Everything might make that a past tense characterization.

Frankly, I think your emotions may be getting the better of your intellect, here.

That is always possible, I suppose. I suspect that Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn are astonished at extent to which the protocol they designed is capable of carrying out remote psychoanalysis.

We had a long discussion of this topic back on Enchiridion Militis years ago. And as I understood you, your objection was in general to doing unpleasant things to people, even if they were not torture, *as a means of obtaining information* rather than as a definite, limited, and pre-set deserved punishment for their past acts.

I certainly recall the discussion. I do remember making that distinction, while at the same time affirming that it is possible to have positive duties - e.g. to disclose information - which are punishable, even continuously over time. IIRC (though this could be wrong - I just don't know what 'state' the torture discussion was in at the time, what information was available, etc) Maximos had the last word, when he pointed out that such distinctions were outside the scope of reality anyway -- that waterboarding just isn't the kind of thing we do as a punishment, and doesn't even make sense as a punishment. And I don't, frankly, have much patience with an "abuse prisoners until they talk" approach: at one and the same time I acknowledge that it could be just to execute KSM by drowning, but that in no way excuses waterboarding him: that it is just to imprison someone for refusing to talk when he has a duty to do so, but that in no way justifies prisoner abuse.

Whatever the case with respect to lost discussions from several years ago, the substantive point of the present post addresses the resurgence of the "we need a definition of torture which can comprehensively address every hypothetical I can possibly think of to throw at it" trope. No, we don't; and beyond that, one isn't even possible. The "optimistic casuistrist" has no more justification for believing in an explicit formal "theory of everything morally wrong in interrogation" than the optimistic naturalist has for believing in an explicit formal theory of everything physical. And those who take the impossibility of such TOE's as in any way pettifogging the definiteness of certain specific conclusions on the subject matter are also in the wrong. This is the positivist-postmodern dynamic at work.

I unequivocally condemn waterboarding. And I entirely agree that we don't need a comprehensive definition of "torture" to see that some things count, just as we don't need a comprehensive definition of "child abuse" to see that some things count. I just think waking terrorists up at 3 a.m. with bright lights to ask them questions is okay. I'm sufficiently inclined to err on the side of not torturing people that it's entirely plausible that any sort of interrogation I would be willing to countenance as non-torture and not wrong would be so mild that our evil enemies would be hurt more by laughing hard at anyone who tried it as a means of getting them to talk than they would be by the interrogation itself. And if so, so. Consequentialism is false. (Which is why the Obama administration shouldn't lie--though the fact that they have doesn't surprise me--with the whole "torture didn't make us safer" stuff. They should man up and say, "Looks like torture did make us safer, but it was still wrong." But pigs will fly first.)

They should man up and say, "Looks like torture did make us safer, but it was still wrong."

Is there any sort of proof of that? Cheney's unsupported assertions aside, there are many people who claim otherwise. In any event, a consequentialist would have to demonstrate a reliable result in order to even begin the argument. Torture has a reliable history of producing false confessions, for true confessions it notoriously unreliable.

Zippy, I'm sorry to be pedantic. But I find that I'm at least a hundred and fifty times more bothered by the gross misuse of philosophical terms of art than I am by the waterboarding of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

But that rather understates the case, since a hundred and fifty times zero is still zero.

I'm trying to figure out if you are disagreeing that Stephen Hawking's philosophy informing (say) A Brief History of Time is (or was) positivist; and if so, what term of art you would use to describe it.

A century later, there were the "logical positivists," amongst whom W. V. O. Quine's mentor Rudolf Carnap was perhaps the most prominent.

Neither Comte nor Carnap enjoys much of any philosophical following today, even though neither of them ever claimed that "unless we have a theory of everything X we don't know anything relevant about X."

If there's anybody out there who *does* claim anything of the sort, and who calls himself a "positivist," I'd like to find out who it is, so that I can give him a good talking to.

Oh, and by the way: it's so unusual for me to get the chance to disagree with Lydia that I feel like I ought to seize the opportunity while I can:

I do not unequivocally condemn waterboarding.

In fact, every time I think of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being waterboarded, it puts a smile on my face & a skip in my step.

I mean, sure - "Vengeance is the Lord's," and all that. No doubt KSM can look forward to an eternal after-life of "timeless torment, parched passion beyond expiation" which will be far worse than anything we mere mortals can even begin to imagine...

...but, just in case, why not pull out the odd fingernail or two, while we've got the chance?

What I'd like to see, Steve, is more people who take my position on torture who would be very hawkish on the death penalty. That would (besides being the correct position) illustrate the best channeling of that desire for justice, righteous anger, and sense of the distinction between guilt and innocence that I think lies behind some people's advocacy of torture. I sympathize, to put it bluntly, with the desire that the wicked should be punished. I have no sympathy for pacifism or for the idea that we just have to stop people from being a threat. I am a thoroughgoing retributivist. But torture just ain't the right direction for that to go.

Steve: So you do or don't think that a positivist philosophy forms part of the background metaphysics of some of Hawking's writing, and the quest for physical theories of everything more generally, as an example? Or, said differently, you object to people using the term 'positivist' to describe it?

I am struggling to understand precisely what your position on capital punishment is. Could you explain what it means exactly to be 'hawkish' on the death penalty? Does this mean you are unequivocally in favor of it? I'm trying to ground myself in this discussion, and I'm having trouble seeing how/why you seem to be in favor of execution. Thanks.

The post is not really about the death penalty. My own position and the background assumption of the post is the Catholic position, that is, that the death penalty can be morally licit under a prudential judgment, that is, in certain circumstances, but that the conditions for that to be the case are very strict. The DP perhaps makes a good example class of cases for those who already stipulate that it is not intrinsically immoral to punish by death; but I don't want this thread to degenerate into a discussion of the DP in itself, especially among interlocutors who agree in substance that (1) some kinds of deliberate killing are morally licit, and (2) that there is such a thing as intrinsically immoral acts, that is, kinds of acts which cannot be justified by any appeal to the remote intentions of the person performing the act. The DP isn't the subject of this post or its sister post (my immediately previous one).

Do definitions of "torture", "theft", "murder", etc, need to be "well-defined" in the mathematical sense to have any meaning? Is this kind of what you are arguing against?

For example, I think we all agree that at some point taxation becomes unjust. You can tax people too much, but the exact amount that is "too much" cannot be "proven" in a strict mathematical sense. In fact, any amount given seems arbitrary, but it is a mistake to conclude that because the precise amount of taxation that is "too much" cannot be determined, that no amount is unjust. In other words, we do not need to know the exact amount to know that some amount is too much.

Do definitions of "torture", "theft", "murder", etc, need to be "well-defined" in the mathematical sense to have any meaning? Is this kind of what you are arguing against?

Not at all! In fact the point of the post is just the opposite. (That is to say, yes, that is indeed what I am arguing against).

The typical discussion - I've had it hundreds of times with different interlocutors, and sometimes the same interlocutors, over the past six years - goes something like this:

The fact that we have tortured prisoners is criticized by A.

B says that we need a definition of torture.

A gives or points to a few definitions of torture; often the ones that are already written in the law, the Geneva Conventions (Common Article 3 of which applies to non-state actors like terrorists), the Army Field Manual, etc.

B starts generating hypotheticals and throwing them at the wall, insisting that the definitions are inadequate because they cannot formally and explicitly handle every single hypothetical B can think of. As definitions are refined to handle the hypotheticals, B keeps generating hypotheticals. B insists either explicitly or implicitly that the definitions are inadequate, as long as he can keep generating hypotheticals any of which are difficult.

My point is twofold, I suppose. First, that B's whole 'process' is just the positivist-postmodern fallacy conflating completeness (the capacity of a definition to formally and explicitly handle every possible hypothetical anyone can think of) with definiteness (we definitely tortured prisoners). Second, that we definitely tortured prisoners and should not torture prisoners, and that the theoretical discussion is nice and all as long as everyone involved in it stipulates ahead of time that we definitely tortured prisoners and should not torture prisoners.

It usually turns out though that not many people are interested in the discussion with those stipulations. That inevitably leaves the impression that the positivist-postmodern treatment of torture definitions is not as much an exercise in legitimate (if misguided) casuistry as it is about casting doubt on whether we definitely tortured prisoners and definitely should not torture prisoners. Lack of completeness in our definitions is being used, in typical postmodern fashion, to cast doubt on the definiteness of any particular conclusion at all.

I suspect that "physicalist" or "materialist" might be closer to what you're on about, here.

The reason I don't use those terms is that, for example, one need not believe in the existence (yet to be discovered) of a complete formal theory of everything physical (as e.g. Hawking did for most of his career) to be a physicalist, that is, to believe that physical things are the only things which exist. And indeed, one need not be a physicalist to believe in the existence of such a theory. Positivism is distinct from physicalism and is something often believed about epistemic domains other than the physical. So it would clearly be a mistake to label the class of beliefs I am discussing 'physicalism', even if one objects to the label 'positivism' for that class of beliefs.

Lack of completeness in our definitions is being used, in typical postmodern fashion, to cast doubt on the definiteness of any particular conclusion at all.

Are you actually suggesting that arriving at the very definition of such terms is both meaningless and pointless?

If that's indeed the case, I shudder to think the kind of injustice that would be visited upon certain citizens simply because they happen to be condemned arbitrarily of committing certain crimes, even though what they happened to have done was anything but a crime.

In other words, I should think that there is concrete reason why we go through certain lengths at defining exactly what constitutes certain crimes.

Perhaps one should re-educate one's self concerning an earlier history of res publica in Rome where examples as the one I happened to describe in the aforementioned are replete, particularly concerning the Plebs and the notable (or rather certain 'notorious') Patriarchs.

Are you actually suggesting that arriving at the very definition of such terms [as torture] is both meaningless and pointless?

Not at all, as I try to make clear in my posts and comments. We already have many useful definitions of torture, under which waterboarding prisoners has for a very long time indeed (and reasonably so) been quite univocally considered torture. What I am suggesting is that many people in these discussions tend to conflate completeness and definiteness, whether innocently or for polemical reasons.

"Vengeance is the Lord's," and all that. No doubt KSM can look forward to an eternal after-life of "timeless torment...

...but, just in case, why not pull out the odd fingernail or two, while we've got the chance?

Just in case. Yes, it helps to believe in the Lord before his vengeance will count for much. You are no more "bothered by the gross misuse of philosophical terms of art" than I am repulsed by the abuse of the theological kind.

"So you do or don't think that a positivist philosophy forms part of the background metaphysics of some of Hawking's writing, and the quest for physical theories of everything more generally, as an example? Or, said differently, you object to people using the term 'positivist' to describe it?"

Hawking has described himself as a positivist (in 'The Universe in a Nutshell' I think), but does so to explain his conception of the relationship between the universe 'as it really is' and our scientific models of it (short answer -- there is no such relationship, since Hawking doesn't think phrases such as 'the X as it really is' are meaningful). He doesn't, as far as I know (and I can't see how he even could in principle), understand positivism in the way Zippy initially described it.

You are, presumably, familiar with & unbothered by the ubiquitous threats of eternal torment in the gospels? So you presumably don't have a problem with "torture", as such? So long as it's being conducted under the proper auspices?

Sorry to be flippant - but I am really, truly, deeply fed up with all the silly moral exhibitionism that seems to run the show whenever this issue rears its ugly head.

...since Hawking doesn't think phrases such as 'the X as it really is' are meaningful...

Right. That is also typically positivist. What the formal theory entails is all that is meaningfully the case, and other statements are meaningless/irrelevent. (I said as much parenthetically in the post, and gratuitously asserted that that is equivalent to the other formulation. Why they are equivalent I left as an exercise for the reader, since it is just a blog post, that part of which is merely background for the central point about the endless pseudo-quest for a Theory of Everything Torture).

Mind you, positivism - like postmodernism, liberalism, and any number of other "isms" - is incoherent. Because it (where "it" is any of the above and other things beside) is incoherent it speaks in many voices, not all of which are even consistent with each other let alone with reality.

You are "unbothered by the ubiquitous threats of eternal torment in the gospels" because, though "vengeance is the Lord's," you think we ought to torture people anyway, "just in case," which means you don't take the threats seriously, and in fact harbor great contempt for the possibility that they might be true. Oh, and let's not forget: the vision of KSM being tortured "puts a spring in your step." Now there's a reason to go forward. And your use of "torture" to describe divine justice is simply more of that flippancy you confessed to, which is really your own brand of contempt, the only quality discernible when you touch upon these subjects, and "I am really, truly, deeply fed up with" it. Sorry I ran out of adverbs.

Lydia - since William Luse keeps asking me to respond to your question...

You write: "God's going to let people out of hell when they tell what He wants them to tell?"

...which seems to suggest that one still has the chance to repent of one's errors *after death*.

But what is the scriptural basis for this claim?

So far as I can tell, the message of the gospels is unambiguous: you've got to believe in exactly the right thing (i.e., the divinity & saving mission of Jesus of Nazareth) at exactly the right time (i.e., at the very moment of the fast-approaching end of the world)...or you're outta luck. You will toast. For ever and ever.

I was pointing out--perhaps rather humorously and flippantly with the "who knew?"--a disanalogy between torture as we are discussing it (interrogation) and hell, and I was implying that this disanalogy might lead us to think that there are other disanalogies.

I don't actually agree with your characterization of the "message of the Gospel" and believing exactly the right thing at the right time. After all, God grabbed St. Paul before he was St. Paul by the lapels and might do the same to others, even, for all we know, at the moment of death.

Moreover, there are lots of fairly important theological aspects to hell which have been written about and thought about fairly deeply by lots of Christians--for example, the connection of hell with separation from God--that I think you are overlooking in making a simple analogy to torture. And that is aside from the question, which has been seriously debated among Christians, as to whether the flames are literal or metaphorical. I believe John Calvin (of all surprising people) took them to be metaphorical.

And then, of course, there's just the fact that God can indeed do things we can't do. If God takes the life of a suffering child so the child can go to heaven and be with Himself, this is not murder. If I do it, it is. If God causes you to be in a car accident to bring you to take Him more seriously, this is mercy. If a human being cuts your brake-line with the same motivation, he is doing something evil and deserves heavy punishment. I'd be inclined to say such a human being deserves the death penalty. So it seems that the whole enterprise of analogizing divine and human action in a simplistic way is...simplistic.

...you've got to believe in exactly the right thing (i.e., the divinity & saving mission of Jesus of Nazareth) at exactly the right time (i.e., at the very moment of the fast-approaching end of the world)...or you're outta luck.

Well, I would object to the formulation "believe in exactly the right thing", since I think the whole notion of faith as believing things is wrongheaded post-reformation tripe. Trusting a person may lead one to believe various things, of course, but it is a mistake to conflate the trusting part with its effects. And faith means trusting a person, not believing in things.

Steve, I think you are implying that God is unjust for condemning people to hell for unbelief. But you must (surely you must) know that not only is this a big topic but also that it is a topic about which Christians have had a lot of interesting things to say. The subject of the virtuous heathen, for example, is not addressed as such in Scripture. But St. Paul implies that the heathen who have not heard of the true God in so many words will be judged for breaking the law they know, not merely for "not believing in the right guy at the right time." The Christian God is, as you know, by definition just, so simply dismissing Him as a super-being sadistically torturing people for not believing in Him (especially if they had no reason to believe in Him) is shallow. Dante provides us with a much more nuanced view on the whole subject, including the question of the virtuous pagans, than the one implied in your comment.

As for those who have been told of Christ and offered good reason to believe in Him and have nonetheless rejected Him, their situation is rightly and understandably very grave indeed. Every man is expected to follow the light that he has. I myself am strongly inclined to C.S. Lewis's view: "In the end, there are only two kinds of people: Those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'Thy will be done.'" I believe that God exists and has revealed Himself to man. You don't. I understand that. But on the off chance that I'm right and you're wrong, and considering that you are not one of those poor blokes who never had a chance to know any better, I suggest you consider Lewis's comment rather seriously.

Well, I would object to the formulation "believe in exactly the right thing", since I think the whole notion of faith as believing things is wrongheaded post-reformation tripe. Trusting a person may lead one to believe various things, of course, but it is a mistake to conflate the trusting part with its effects. And faith means trusting a person, not believing in things.

I think you were right in your original formulation. Faith is definitely "believing in things," although it is intimately related to "trusting a person." True, if you look at faith with all its proper attributes, it is more that just believing in things. But if you say that this is what faith is, you would be essentially correct.

Post a comment

Note: In order to limit duplicate comments, please submit a comment only once. A comment may take a few minutes to appear beneath the article.

Although this site does not actively hold comments for moderation, some comments are automatically held by the blog system. For best results, limit the number of links (including links in your signature line to your own website) to under 3 per comment as all comments with a large number of links will be automatically held. If
your comment is held for any reason, please be patient and an author or administrator will approve it. Do not resubmit the same
comment as subsequent submissions of the same comment will be held as well.

Reverse the order of the digits in 31, then type the answer using letters instead of numbers, all lower case. (required):